As Thorns Thrust Away
by Solstice Zero
Summary: When a young man accidentally changes the course of history, the world once again begins to fall apart, with Torchwood at the center. Now Complete.
1. Chapter 1

_"But the sons of rebellion shall all be as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with the hands."  
Samuel 23:6_

Chapter One

* * *

The Tourist Office phone was ringing.

Ianto swept the bead curtain back and stared at the white plastic device on the curved desk.

That was new.

He stepped up to it, cleared his throat, and had the wholly unfamiliar experience of lifting it from the cradle and pressing it against his ear. "Cardiff Tourist Office, how may I help you?"

"Watson – come here – I need you."

"Pardon?" Ianto put his free hand over his other ear, straining to hear.

"Watson – come here – I need you."

"I believe you have the wrong number."

"Watson – come here – I need you."

Then the line went dead.

Ianto held the phone away from him for a moment, looking at it as though it might bite him. Then he set it carefully back into the cradle and thumbed the intercom to Jack's office.

"Jack?"

"Ianto! I was just thinking about you."

"I'm sure it was something pleasant."

"You have no idea."

Ianto smirked at the growl in Jack's voice and leaned against the desk. "I've just received a call on the Tourist Office phone."

"Oh? That's new. Who from?"

"No idea. It sounded like a recording. Someone asking for a 'Watson'."

"As in 'elementary, my dear'?"

"There _are_ real people with the name Watson, Jack."

"None as interesting as the fake one."

Ianto sighed. "I take it that the phone call doesn't concern you?"

"Don't worry about it. Probably just a prank call. Although – it is a little familiar, isn't it?"

Ianto thought for a moment. "No, not particularly."

"Well, whatever. Coffee?"

"I'll be down in a minute."

Ianto took one final look at the phone, then pressed the button to open the concealed door and went off down the hall to the lift.

- - -

"Jack," Gwen called, leaning away from her workstation monitor, "come take a look at this."

Jack set down the mug that Ianto had just handed him and jerked his head for Ianto to follow him, leaving his office and walking up behind Gwen. He put a hand on her shoulder and leaned toward the monitor.

"I've just picked up some strange rift activity-" She cut off, tapping a few buttons. A replay of what she had just seen appeared on the screen. Jack's eyebrows shot up.

"Weird." He took her shoulders and gently stood her up out of the chair, then took her place, typing rapidly without looking at the keys. Ianto and Gwen exchanged a glance.

Jack spoke with his eyebrows furrowed, leaning in close to the monitor. "It looks like a negative rift spike followed by a positive rift spike in the same location."

A beeping began from another workstation. Ianto stepped over to it. "We're tracking residual rift energy through the center of Cardiff."

Gwen peered over his shoulder. "So something's come through?"

"Looks like." Ianto looked to Jack. "And it's moving rather quickly."

Jack grinned. "Grab your coats, kids. We're going hunting."

- - -

"Left here." Gwen was in the backseat of the SUV, looking down at the tracking device in her hand. Ianto's face floated vaguely troubled over the steering wheel.

Jack looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "What?"

He glanced around, making the turn. "This is my old neighborhood. Where I grew up."

"Stop!"

Ianto hit the brakes quickly, turning back to look at Gwen. She grinned sheepishly. "Uh – that house. It went into that house."

Ianto started to park along the street. "Can we make an attempt not to crash the SUV by yelling 'stop', please?"

"Will do." Gwen smirked as she unbuckled herself and climbed out of the seat. She slammed the door and looked up at the house. "Bit of a dump here, isn't it?"

"That isn't insulting in the least, Gwen, thanks." Ianto straightened his tie in the driverside mirror.

"Oh, come off it, Ianto," she laughed, looking over at him. "You don't live here anymore, do you?"

"My family does."

Jack came around the side of the car. "Does that mean we get to meet the Joneses?"

"Thus ends this conversation." Ianto walked up the driveway toward the front door. Gwen and Jack followed, sharing identical amused looks.

He knocked on the door. From inside, there was the sound of dogs barking, high pitched and baritone, and a woman shouting for them to quiet down. Then the door flew open, and exactly the type of woman that Ianto expected to appear appeared. Housedress, robe, hair in curlers, cigarette in her right hand. She looked out at them with half-lidded eyes, a scowl stretched across her pale lips.

"What do you want, then?"

Ianto balked. "We've, uh-"

Jack stepped up and put a hand on his shoulder – charming smile, as if greeting the Queen. "Hello there! Has anyone or anything come into your house in the last fifteen minutes?"

She eyed Jack up and down, her distaste stretching her scowl further. "The police, are ya? Jussa mo'." She turned full around in the doorway and screamed up the stairs by the door, "David!"

An answering scream, "Wha?"

"Police're here ta see ya! Whadja do this time?"

"Nothin'!"

She looked back over her shoulder at them. "E's upstairs. And if yer takin' 'im , keep 'im overnight. I've a friend coming over." The way that she said 'friend' insinuated that this person was not of the female persuasion.

Jack again flashed that charming smile and started up the stairs. Gwen followed, trying to contain her laughter, and Ianto fell in behind them. Quietly, he asked, "Why does this kid have a trail of residual rift energy?"

Gwen looked back at him. "Dunno."

Jack paused. "He might have picked something up that fell through the rift. Wouldn't be the first time."

David's room was fairly obviously the first room at the top of the stairs – the door was covered in photographs and magazine clippings. Gwen naturally took the lead, tapping on the open door and stepping inside. Ianto and Jack stood in the doorway, taking in the wreck of a room.

The kid didn't even look up at the knock. Dark haired, wiry, sitting cross-legged on his bed with a game controller in his hands, staring at his television, where the barrel of a gun floated bottom-center of the screen. Gwen cleared her throat. "David?"

"I didn't do nothing." He didn't look at her.

She glanced back at Jack and Ianto. They were no help – twin raised eyebrows, 'what-do-you-expect-us-to-do?'

"David," she said, stepping toward him. "Would you mind turning off the game and talking to us for a few minutes?"

"I told you I didn't do nothing, didn't I?" He still didn't look at her, but there was the slightest hint of panic in his voice. A wideness to his eyes as he stared intently at the screen.

Gwen sighed and dug around in her jacket pocket, then pulled out something that looked a bit like a metal pen. She held it up in front of her and thumbed a button at the side. The low hum of the game console quit and the screen went dark.

"Hey!" David leapt off the bed and knelt in front of the console, trying and failing to turn it back on.

"Oh, that's a shame, isn't it?" Gwen slipped the gizmo back in her pocket. "I've heard that those systems are a bit touchy."

He looked at her, then sat back on his bed, slouched and silent. Gwen rolled a chair away from the cluttered desk by the door and sat across from him, putting on her best PC Cooper smile. "Now, no distractions, yes? My name is Gwen Cooper – this is Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones. What's your full name?"

"David Arthur Menai." This he mumbled, looking down at his ripped-jeans knees.

"And how old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Can you tell me what you were doing around the center of Cardiff about twenty minutes ago?"

He glanced at Jack and Ianto in the doorway, then looked back at her. "I was waiting for some mates. They didn't show, so I left."

"How long were you waiting?"

"Half-hour abou'."

The lie was easy to spot; the slight pause, the uncertainty in his voice. Gwen shifted to cross her legs and lean an elbow on her knee. "David, while you were there, did you see anything strange? A flash of light, maybe? Or did you pick anything up?"

He shook his head, his eyes still just slightly too wide. "I didn't see nothing."

Gwen sighed. "Right." She stood. "Would you mind standing up for me?"

"What for?"

"Just stand, please."

He did so, slowly, looking more and more as though he didn't know what was going on. This increased tenfold when Gwen brought out something that looked like a large PDA. "Arms up," she said, and he did so, watching as she traced the object over his body. It beeped and flashed until finally she finished and put it away. She looked back at Jack and Ianto. "It's definitely him. Not something he picked up. Him."

David looked between Gwen and the men in the doorway, his eyes huge, the panic finally gripping him fully. "What? Is it radiation poisoning or something? Was that a Geiger counter?"

Jack ignored him, coming into the room and looking closely at him, confusion written all over his face. "We know that you saw something. We're going to find out one way or the-"

There was a shriek from downstairs. "David! David! Turn on your telly! There's monsters attacking people on the news!"

Jack, Gwen and Ianto looked at each other, wide-eyed, then ran for the stairs.

* * *

_**Author's Note: **I promise that the next two chapters will be much longer and much more serious than this chapter. And I do mean serious. This looks to be a three-chapter deal, but you know me. Might be four. We'll see! A note about the opening quote - I'm not religious, but I do love a good title pulled from the bible. That particular quote is from the last words of David, as in 'David and Goliath'. Took a lot of reading to finally find a suitably flowery analogy._

_Look for an update at some point this week - perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Wednesday. I'm sorry if this chapter is a little bit different from the way I normally write them - today was a strange writing day. The next chapter should be better.  
_


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

* * *

The three of them swept past the panicked woman at the bottom of the stairs, followed by the kid, who she stopped with one hand on his chest at last step. "What's happened to _your_ telly?"

"They broke it," he said, trying to dodge around her.

"They _what?_"

He broke her hold of him and ran into the sitting room, where Gwen, Jack and Ianto stood staring at the small television. His mother followed him in and shouted at their backs, "You're paying for that!"

They ignored her; Jack ducked forward and turned up the volume.

"Bloody coppers show up at my door and break my son's telly! That's harassment, that is! I could press char-"

"Mum!" David turned to her. "_Shut up_, would you?"

She closed her mouth, glaring at him, then stalked off. From the tinny television speakers, the news anchor's slightly panicked voice popped and cracked in poor quality:

"We're being told that people are disappearing from the streets of Cardiff. Police are cautioning residents to stay indoors. We've been given very little information on what exactly these creatures are, but they are highly dangerous, as you can see from this clip caught by an unnamed source-"

The anchor disappeared and was replaced with mobile phone-quality footage of a large, flying creature descending on an elderly man in his front garden. It was reptilian and dark, with tough-looking skin, and as it landed on top of the man and started to tear at him, it seemed to glow around its head and mouth as if it were on fire inside. The screaming sound it made, coupled with the screams from its victim, made Gwen turn her eyes away.

To Jack. Whose face was openly shocked.

"What are they?" she asked, stepping toward him, trying to keep herself from looking at the screen, even as Ianto continued to stare, mesmerized by the footage.

"Reapers," Jack breathed. He looked at David. "What did you do?"

David's eyes grew huge. "What? Nothing!"

Jack stepped up to him, jabbing a finger at his chest as he spoke. "Reapers are attracted to disturbances in time. They feed on temporal paradoxes. This is somehow related to whatever just happened to you, so unless you'd like the world to end, maybe you should tell us about it!"

David stepped back, looking terrified. "I didn't do anything! I was just standing there, right, and there was this great flash of light and – I fell into this white thing, and a few seconds later I was back in the same place I'd been, but-" He hesitated, his eyes flickering over their faces. "You'll think I'm mad."

Ianto pointed at the television, looking at David. "Monsters. In Cardiff."

David swallowed a nodded. "Point. Well-" Jack made a hurry-up gesture with his hand. "I saw myself. Myself, like, a few seconds before the flash of light, standing there. And he – I – saw me. And ran off. Then the flash came again, and after it was gone I saw the other me sort of – disappear in this weird gold light."

Jack stared. "You are either the most lucky or unlucky kid on the planet."

Gwen grabbed Jack's arm. "What's he talking about?"

"The rift," Jack said, looking at her. "It took him. But the place it took him to was only a few seconds before and a few feet away. So he saw himself – the Him that was supposed to be taken by the rift saw the Him that _was_ taken by the rift, and he ran off. So he was never taken in the first place." He looked at David. "A paradox. A total fluke of the rift."

"So – it's not my fault, right?" He looked desperately between Jack and Gwen.

Ianto looked to Jack. "What exactly are these things? What are they doing?"

Jack turned to look at the television, where the footage was being played over and over again. "The Reapers. Time's Swiffer Dusters." He looked between them. "They live in the time vortex and wait for a temporal anomaly, like a paradox, to open up a new dimension. An alternate one from the way that things are supposed to be. Then they enter that dimension and destroy it. The older something is, the tastier it is, and they start with the sentient beings first, then work down to physical things. Then nonphysical things. Then Time itself. Until there's nothing left. No trace of the alternate dimension." He locked eyes with David. "That's what's happening out there right now."

"Rhys," Gwen said suddenly, and dug in her pocket for her mobile, then tapped his speed dial and pressed it to her ear. The others watched as she waited. It didn't ring. Instead, a man's voice, sounding distant, like poor reception, came on the line. She held the phone away from her ear, looking at it. "What's that?"

Jack took the phone from her and listened.

"Watson – come here – I need you."

His eyes went wide and he slapped his forehead. "Of course! Anachronisms." He gave the phone back to Gwen. "I should have recognized it from the call Ianto got in the Tourist Office. That's the first phone call ever made by Alexander Graham Bell. The disturbance in time caused by the Reapers being in this dimension throws the phones out, then-" The television went to static. Jack glanced at it. "Then TV and radio."

Ianto flipped the television off. "Well, that won't start a panic."

"There won't be anyone left to panic if we don't – Hey! Where do you think you're going?"

Gwen was running for the front door. She called back over her shoulder, "We have to get Rhys. Now. Hurry up!" She left the door open behind her and ran down the front garden toward the SUV.

Jack started after her, then paused and grabbed David's arm. "You're coming with us."

"Why?" That terrified look had not lifted from his face for even a second.

"We'll need your help to stop this." Jack looked him in the eye. "It's all right. We won't hurt you."

David swallowed, then called back over his shoulder toward what was probably the kitchen, "Mum, I'm – I'm going out!"

The answer came, "And stay there!" Followed by low mumbling.

"Charming woman," Jack said gruffly, and pulled David out of the house, followed closely by Ianto.

- - -

They pulled up outside of Gwen's flat about ten minutes later. Gwen and Ianto leapt out and hurried up to it, leaving Jack and David in the car.

Rhys was in the kitchen, mobile in his hand, pacing. When Gwen burst through the door, he looked up with equal relief and irritation. "What the bloody hell, Gwen? I've been trying to get ahold of you – news is on about monsters and people disappearing and of course I know it's you lot working on it-"

"Rhys!" Gwen grabbed his arm to stop the rant. "We've got to go. Come on!" She pulled him out of the door. Ianto gave an awkward little nod as they went past and shut the door behind them.

Outside, the rant continued. "I've had it just about up to here with these 'emergencies' – why can't the bloody aliens just stay on their own damn planets and stop coming to bother us? Aren't there other planets out there for them to be going to? And what is it about Cardiff, anyway? London, you'd think, more sci-fi and everythin-" He stopped dead, staring up into the air. "The hell is that?"

Gwen and Ianto followed his gaze. Twenty feet in the air above them, a Reaper looked back at them with eyes on fire. They froze, mouths open, and stared. Then it screamed and opened its wings and dove, and they were moving, running for the SUV. Rhys tripped and Gwen turned back to help him – and the Reaper landed on top of him and battered him with its wings, mixing its screams with his.

"Rhys!" Gwen went to run at the creature, but the blue-clad arms suddenly around her middle prevented her from going anywhere. Jack yelled back over his shoulder for Ianto to get the SUV started and began to drag Gwen, kicking and struggling, away from the Reaper and Rhys and toward the car. As she watched, Rhys disappeared, and the Reaper turned its eyes on them again.

Jack threw her into the back of the SUV next to a horrified David, leapt in after her, slammed the door closed and told Ianto to drive.

- - -

"Jack, we have to go back, we have to find-"

"Gwen!" Jack grabbed her by the shoulders. They were in the hub, just past the rolldoor, and Gwen's mascara was tracked down both of her cheeks from her crying. "You have to pull yourself together. We'll save him." He ducked his head to look at her face. "We will. But first we have to stop what's happening out there." He waited for her to nod, and when she did he released her and walked to the workstations.

"How are we going to do that?" Ianto asked, following him, taking his coat as he shrugged out of it.

"Remember Archangel?" Jack started typing at the computer terminal.

Ianto folded the coat over his arm. "The mobile network? Didn't they go out of business after Harold Saxon died?"

"Yeah," Jack said, smirking very slightly. "Something like that. Well, the satellites are still there." He stepped away so that Ianto could see the image on the screen – fifteen satellites orbiting the Earth. "Still working. And I've got them patched into the Torchwood server."

Ianto looked at him, confused. "What for?"

"This," Jack said, and hit the Enter key.

There was a strange jerk, as if the entire Earth had jumped a few meters. Then everything settled, and Jack pulled up the CCTV feeds.

"What did you just do?" Gwen came up the stairs and over to them, peering at the screen. There was nothing moving outside, as Jack cycled through the feeds. No people, no Reapers.

"The time lock," Jack said, grinning. "I applied Tosh's time lock to the Archangel satellites. It's transmitting to the entire planet. Anything trying to work against it is caught in it, so the Reapers are – paused, I guess. It isn't permanent, and when it fails it's probably going to break the whole time lock mechanism, but I think it's worth it, don't you?" He looked between them. They nodded.

"What are we going to do when it fails, though?" Gwen looked at Jack. "How are we going to stop them?"

Jack took a breath. He let it out. He looked to the cog door.

To David, standing awed, staring up and around at the hub.

"We use him."

David looked quickly to Jack. "What?"

Gwen echoed, "What?" She stepped toward him, between David and Jack. "What are you going to do?" She was peering hard at him.

He didn't look at her; he looked over her shoulder, to where David still stood, looking uncertain, frightened. "We use him. This is happening because he was supposed to go through the rift. The only way to fix it-"

"No." Gwen, wide-eyed, stepped away from Jack and closer to David. "You can't."

Jack's voice was stern. "It's the only way."

"You can't make a sixteen year old boy sacrifice himself, Jack!"

"_What?_" David backed against the bars of the exit cage, staring at them. "What do you mean, sacrifice myself?"

Gwen turned and moved toward him, down the stairs. "He wants you to throw yourself into the rift."

"What's the rift?"

Jack spoke over her. "There's a rift in time and space that runs through Cardiff. Sometimes people are lost in it. You were supposed to be-"

"He could end up at the center of the _sun_, Jack!"

David looked further horrified. Jack turned his eyes to Gwen, his face deadly serious, his hands gripping the railing of the hub's upper level as he peered down at her.

"This is the only way to bring Rhys back."

He watched as Gwen went completely still. Her eyes went wide and unfocused. Her mouth drew into a tight line across her face.

She looked as though her whole world was imploding inside of her head.

She looked back at David. She opened her mouth. She closed it. Opened it again.

She walked off, disappearing somewhere into the hub.

David stared after her, then looked at Jack. "What are you talking about?"

"Time has been damaged," Jack said, grave and calm. "When you came back through the rift and scared yourself off, you created a paradox. A second reality, where you never went through. That's why those creatures are attacking people. They want to destroy this second reality, because it isn't supposed to exist. The only way to heal Time now is either to let them do it – let them destroy everything – or to knit the two realities back together by sending you through the rift again. If we do that, everything will go back to the way it was. Only we have no idea where you might end up, and there's no way to get back here again."

David looked like he was going to cry. Ianto, silent, standing beyond Jack by the computer terminals, understood completely. Fifteen minutes before he was playing videogames in his bedroom. Now he was in a huge underground base being told that the only way to save the world was for him to essentially kill himself.

Ianto stepped forward and said quietly to Jack, "How long will the time lock hold?"

Jack looked to him. "A few hours. Four at most."

Ianto glanced to David. "Give him time to decide." He met Jack's eyes. "Please."

Jack held his gaze for a few moments, then nodded. To David, he called, "You have two hours to think about what you want to do." To Ianto he quietly said, "Keep an eye on him. Can you?"

Ianto nodded. Jack turned and walked into his office.

Ianto stood on the hub's second level with Jack's coat still draped over his arms, looking down at David, who stood with his hands shaking at his sides, staring at the floor between his shoes, his breath coming in little hitching gasps. And there was silence.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note:** Hi! Sorry for the long wait between updates. Very busy week. But, here it is. Turns out that there will indeed be four chapters, although the next chapter is going to be more of a resolution/epilogue sort of thing. Hopefully that will be up in the next few days. Thanks for all of the reviews, by the way - I lost track of who I had sent "Thank You"s to, so I figured I would include a general "Thank You" here for the ones that have been given so far. Hope you enjoy it.  
_

Chapter Three

* * *

"That's well flash, innit?"

"We do not touch the Incendiary Helix Gun."

David looked at Ianto with a smirk. "Anything we do touch?"

"The insides of our pockets." Ianto steered David out of the armory. "It's a tour, not a Please Touch Museum."

David sighed, hands stuffed into his hoodie pouch, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "So you catch aliens."

"That we do." Ianto motioned for David to follow him up the stairs and past the workstations.

"Can I see any?"

Ianto paused, thinking. "We haven't any in," he lied, deciding that perhaps Janet wasn't the best First Alien, no matter what Jack thought. "But," he said, holding a door open and letting David through, "we do have a bit of alien flora."

"Plants," David sighed, trailing his fingers over a shelf of clay pots spilling purple leaves. "No offense, mate, but in terms of sci-fi, alien roses are a bit-" There was a loud screech from the hub proper. David looked up, surprised. "What was that?"

"Myfanwy," Ianto said with an easy grin, leaning against the door.

"Who's Myfanwy?" David peered out through the greenhouse windows.

"Our pet pterodactyl. You were saying?"

David turned to stare at him. "Nevermind." He looked closer at the plants, stopping at one pot in particular, under a heat lamp. "What's this, then?" he asked, pointing at the lump of coral.

Ianto stepped closer, looking. He frowned. "Captain Harkness hasn't told me about that one."

David glanced at him, a small grin on his lips. "That sounds weird on you."

Ianto quirked a brow. "What?"

"_Captain Harkness._"

"How do you mean?"

"You're together, aren't you?"

Ianto's eyebrows shot up. "How do you figure?"

David smiled, looking closer at the plants. "I'm good at spotting those things. Not like a gaydar or anything – although your Captain set mine off from Penarth - just, knowing. The way you took his coat and hung it up and everything."

Ianto was silent, watching as David made his round of the room. God, even the way the kid _looked_ screamed of Ianto's teenage years. Unkempt hair, clothes in tatters. The way he spoke, half "ain't", half books – he'd stopped earlier on the way through Jack's office to trail his eyes covetously over Jack's collection of old tomes.

Ianto said suddenly, "You live three doors away from where I grew up."

David looked at him. "You're related to the Martins?"

Ianto shook his head. "My parents died years ago. Do you know Rhiannon and Johnny Davies?"

David nodded. "Sure. Their kid Mica is mates with my little sister. Rhiannon your sister?"

Ianto smirked. "Johnny not seem like my brother?"

"Bit coarse for ya, yeah," David laughed.

"He's all right." Ianto shrugged and opened the door. "Want to meet Myfanwy?"

"She gonna eat me?"

"She's harmless." Ianto smirked as David went past him. "Just don't look her in the eye."

- - -

Jack found her in the interrogation room, her head down on the table. Her hair hid her face entirely, propped as it was by two clenched fists. Her back shook. He sat across from her and waited.

Without looking up she said, "I'm a terrible person."

Jack said nothing, drumming his fingers on the wooden table.

She looked up, her face red and black with irritation and eyeliner. "You're supposed to say, 'No, you're not.'"

He only looked at her.

She let out a strangled, frustrated sound, taking her hair in two fists and looking down at the table. "How can I think that Rhys is more worth saving than David? He's a _child_! How can my first reaction be to throw him to the wolves?" She paused, then looked up at him. "And how could you do that to me in front of him? Make me choose like that?"

"Do you really think it would have been better if you'd done the same thing where you couldn't see him?"

"No, that isn't what I-"

"It isn't a choice, Gwen."

Her brow furrowed. "How isn't it?"

He looked away from her. "It's the only thing that can happen. It doesn't matter that you chose Rhys over him, because his fate's already sealed. Even if you'd chosen him, you wouldn't be able to save him. He has to go through."

She leaned forward over the table. "It's still a choice. David still has to choose whether he'll do it or not. We won't just throw him into the rift."

Jack met her gaze and was silent.

Gwen's eyes widened and she threw herself away from the table. "Damnit, Jack!" she spat, staring at him. "How the hell can you make that decision?"

He spoke through bared teeth. "It isn't a _decision_. Do you want to die, Gwen? Do you want me and Ianto and David and your parents and everyone you've ever loved to die? Look at it rationally. Look at it without thinking about David as a child. If he doesn't do this, then everything you've ever cared about will be gone in three hours. I would rather his death be my fault than the end of the world be my fault."

She continued to stare, her mouth open in horror. "How – how can you sit there and talk like that and be totally unaffected? He's _sixteen!"_

Jack stood up, shouting so loud that the small room seemed to shake. "_I am affected!"_ His hands were balled into fists, his nostrils flaring. "Do you think that I enjoy this? Being able to think like this? I _wish_ that I could see it the way that you do, but I can't, because the world would have ended hundreds of times by now. These are the decisions that I have to make!" He stopped. He let out a breath, stepping back against the chain link wall in front of the stairs. "I've lived for such a long time. The things that I've done-" He cut off, looking away from her. "I had to do them. To save thousands. It's worth the sacrifice of a few to save thousands. We're sacrificing one to save six billion."

She drooped; she leaned against the wall behind her, staring at the floor. "He's so young," she said quietly.

Jack shook his head. "He might not die. He might end up somewhere safe. He might come back."

He saw the brief look pass over Gwen's face – fear and a kind of sickness – and wished that he hadn't said it. If he came back, it might be to Flat Holm island.

"He might be fine," he said finally.

She looked at him. "He might. But he probably won't."

Jack sighed. "He probably won't."

- - -

Ianto only turned his back for a minute, but it was long enough for David to have disappeared from the conference room. He toggled the hub CCTV feeds onto the hanging screen and searched for him.

Ah. There he was. Curled up on the dark steps of the medical bay. Ianto watched him for a moment, his fingers almost brushing the screen as he leaned close to see the details. David's back shaking. His head in his hands.

Ianto stepped back and closed his eyes, counting slowly in his head. Dread clamped his stomach in fierce knots. He knew what he was about to go and do. He didn't want it. This was exactly the kind of thing that Ianto never wanted.

He exhaled and walked for the medical bay. All the way his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. All the way his jaw tensed and released until it ached.

He sat down one stair above David. When David turned to look at him, the light from the workstation screens behind him lit his face in blue and shadows. "Thought I'd lost you," Ianto said quietly.

"Sorry," David sniffed. "Just-" He indicated himself with one hand – tear-streaked cheeks, runny nose which he wiped with his sleeve.

Ianto nodded. "It's all right."

David laughed with unsteady breath. "It's not. Nothing's all right."

Ianto just waited, looking at him.

David looked away, wiping his eyes. "What do you think I should do?" Ianto dropped his eyes. David noticed. "Sorry," he said. "That isn't fair, is it?"

Ianto shook his head. "It's fine. Do you honestly want my opinion?"

David looked straight at him. "Yeah."

"I think that you have to do it." Ianto held his eyes, even as they widened in fear. "If you don't, you'll die anyway. And so will everyone else."

David winced and looked away. After a moment he said, "You'd do it, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," Ianto said quietly. "I would."

"You wouldn't be afraid?"

"I'd be terrified." David looked at him, surprised. Ianto continued, "But to save my friends, the people I love, my family. I'd do it."

David sighed. He leaned back against the tile wall of the medical bay. "Do you know – what's going to happen to me?"

Ianto felt his heart sink inexplicably at the notes of decision in that question. "I don't know. You could go anywhere. Any time."

"So I could show up in Glasgow in a week?"

Ianto nodded. "Or Beijing in 1790."

David paused, then said in a husky breath, "Or the center of the sun."

Ianto's face creased into a grim frown. "Or there. Or some alien planet."

"I just – I wish I could _know_."

"I know. I'm sorry."

David was quiet for a few moments, looking down at the stairs below him.

Finally, he said, "Can you do something for me?"

Ianto looked at him. "What is it?"

"Can you – my little sister. Her name's Amanda. Ammy. Can you keep an eye on her for me? Just make sure she doesn't end up like my mum." He looked at Ianto, his eyes pleading. "I'm the only one who buys her books."

Ianto stared with burning eyes. Then he swallowed and nodded. "I'll watch out for her."

David looked relieved. "Thank you." A few tears escaped his eyes and he rubbed them away, then stood. "Do I look a mess?"

Ianto stood as well and shook his head. "You're fine."

They met eyes, standing in the dark with only the blue light illuminating their features. Ianto nodded, and gestured David up, then followed him out into the hub.

- - -

Jack and Gwen were sitting in Jack's office, not speaking. Gwen, Ianto observed, still looked as though she had swallowed something a little too large. Jack was expressionless. That said all he needed to know, really.

David stepped into the room, a little awkwardly, looking from Gwen to Jack. "I'm, um. I'm going to do it."

Gwen leapt out of her chair. "Oh, sweetheart-" She wrapped her arms around him. Over her shoulder, Jack could see his mildly uncomfortable, mildly amused, but altogether anxious face.

He pushed away from his desk and stood, coming forward. "I'm sorry," he said, "it's just that-"

"I know," David said, extricating himself out of Gwen's hold. "Ianto told me." He turned back to look at Ianto standing in the doorway.

Jack looked at him, too, with a hidden sort of searching expression. Ianto held his gaze. Yes, Ianto had convinced David to go through with it. Yes, Ianto knew this was the right thing. Yes, Ianto was going to feel unimaginably horrible when this was over. But for now, the boy. Jack looked away.

"The next rift spike is in about half an hour. It should be just enough time for the time lock to hold. Ianto, get the SUV. Gwen, take David out to the Plass. I'll be there in a minute."

Gwen nodded, guiding David out of the office and down toward the cog door with an unneeded arm around his shoulder. Ianto silently turned to go.

"Ianto." Jack stepped toward him.

He turned. "Don't." He met Jack's eyes again. "It's fine. Just – don't." And he left.

Jack looked after him, frowning.

- - -

The location for the rift activity was the middle of a field. They parked along the road and walked into the overgrown weeds and grass. The effect of the time lock was unbelievably eerie; it was seven in the evening, but it looked like mid-afternoon, the sun high in the sky, casting their shadows into the varying shades of green on the ground.

Beside him, Ianto felt David shaking. He put a hand on his shoulder. David looked at him gratefully, but Ianto caught the tightness of his smile, the shaking of his lips, and his stomach knotted further inside of him. Ianto felt like he would be ill.

Then, David was, and they had to stop while Ianto rubbed his back, until he straightened again and wiped his mouth with extreme distaste. "Sorry," he muttered. None of them could speak. Ianto's hand found its way back to David's shoulder. They moved on.

They were almost at the predicted location when the time lock broke.

They felt it; once again like the entire Earth had taken a step to the side, that seismic, internal pull. Then the sun seemed to stutter in the sky – then to move across it, slowly but visibly, turning their shadows into the ground like corkscrews.

Then the screams began.

Reapers appeared in flashes of gold fire above their heads, their scythe-like tails whipping angrily back and forth. Ianto stared up at them, mouth open. There were hundreds. Thousands. They filled the air above them and were visible in all directions.

"Ianto!"

Ianto turned, just in time to be thrust out of the way by a strong blue arm – he kept his grip on David, pulling the boy after him, Jack huddling the three of them – David, Ianto, Gwen – behind him as they stared up at the creatures.

Gwen shouted above the noise of the Reapers, the noise of Time righting itself, like rushing wind through a paper bag, "Jack! How long until the rift spike?"

"Three minutes!" he called back, not looking over his shoulder, instead keeping his eyes up. And the Reapers began to notice them.

One stopped still in the air above them, then screamed and dove.

They hurried out of its way, and it screamed again on the upswing, frustrated and angry. Jack's face hardened to a grimly determined expression, and Gwen grabbed his arm. "Jack, you can't!"

"I can distract them." He shook her off, looking back at them. "Get him through. It'll be fine if you get him through." Then he ran off into the middle of the field.

"Hey!" he shouted, staring up at the sky, which was slowly darkening, a little faster that twilight. "I'm more than two thousand years old! I'm one tasty son of a bitch! Come and get me!"

And they did. Ianto watched as hundreds of screaming, flying creatures dove for the ground and piled on top of Jack, fighting and clawing at each other to get at him. He felt David shifting to look, and heard his horrified intake of breath at the sight.

Beside them, Gwen whispered, "Oh, God. Jack."

She stepped away from them, toward where Jack looked like he was being ripped apart – and was immediately set upon by a Reaper.

"Gwen!" Ianto shouted. But she was gone in an instant, and the Reaper took off back into the air.

Ianto grabbed David's arm and pulled the boy behind him. He was the next oldest. He'd protect him until the last possible second.

The world filled with light. It half blinded them; they stumbled away, holding their hands over their eyes.

After a second, they could see it. A tear hanging open in the air, bright white and emitting an odd warmth in the cold of the field. Ianto's grip on David tightened at the sight of it.

David looked at him. "That's it, isn't it?"

All Ianto could do was nod.

David looked back at it for a moment. Then he put his free hand on the one Ianto was using to hold onto him. "It's all right," he said.

Ianto looked at him, uncomprehending. Then it occurred to him, and he felt his grip tighten.

"Your Captain," David said quietly, "remember? The whole world."

Ianto stared into his face and then, slowly, painfully, he let go of David's arm. David smiled a very tense, very nervous smile.

"Thanks."

Then he ran. He jumped into the gash of light.

Everything went dark.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

* * *

_Hours later_

The stars were out. Ianto stood at the center of the vast field, a rift activity detector silent and dark in his hand, and stared up at the sky, at the tiny points of light shining between dark sheaths of cloud. His breath frosted as he breathed out.

They'd come back. Gwen and Jack. The Reapers had disappeared, seeming to burn away. The world had righted itself. It had gotten dark; it had become night. And Gwen and Jack had returned, looking confused. Then Ianto had told them what happened. David had done it. David had gone through.

He'd gone.

Gwen went home. She wanted to see Rhys, Ianto knew – wanted to touch him, make him real again, solid and alive. Wanted to know that what they had done was worth it, in the end. She still had what she wanted.

Ianto and Jack went back to the hub. Jack had settled at his desk and poured that rare drink. He'd offered one to Ianto, that look in his eyes. The look that came when he'd just done something terrible for the best possible reasons. Ianto declined. He collected his coat and keys. He slipped a rift activity detector into his pocket.

He went back to the field.

He stood there, hoping. Just a flash on the detector, a spark. But there was nothing.

David was really gone.

The dark and the cold pressed Ianto in all directions. The wind ran its icy fingers through his hair, over his exposed skin, through the buttons of his shirt. He shivered. He stared down at the readout of the detector. Something. Something.

It started to snow.

He looked up. And it gripped him. What had he done? This child – God, what had he done? It welled up inside of him, swelling in his stomach and chest, knotted and uncomfortable; shame. Grief. His eyes burned. His chest heaved. He dropped the detector and pressed his hands to either side of his head, letting out a frustrated scream that rang in the dark, in the snow, and echoed back to him from the trees. He'd killed a child, so much like him at that age – killed all of the things that he would have done.

The wind bit at the tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, but he didn't wipe them away. He deserved the pain of it. The cold. Didn't he? He shrugged out of his coat, out of his suit jacket and threw them away; stood shivering in just his shirt, forcing his hands to stay at his sides, letting the grief riot in his stomach, the breath catch and halt in his lungs, the cold seep into his skin.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into the dark, his eyes tightly shut.

A hand gripped his shoulder. "Ianto," Jack whispered, with tears in his voice.

Ianto didn't turn to look at him. He lifted one hand out in front of him and let the snowflakes fall onto his palm; felt the kiss of cold as they dissolved there and the water ran down the lines – life line, fate line, love line.

"It isn't real snow," Jack said quietly from behind him. "The disturbance in the atmosphere from the time lock is causing it."

Ianto looked at his hand. "It's never real snow."

Jack bent and picked up the rift activity detector, which was slowly collecting a dusting of white. He walked a few paces and picked up Ianto's jacket and coat, then returned and pushed them onto Ianto's shoulders, the reverse of their usual dance. And Ianto did not move; only stood looking at his hand in the dark. Looking at the snow and the water.

Jack put his hand on Ianto's arm. "Come on," he said gently.

Ianto turned, still not looking up, and began to walk back toward the road. He felt Jack beside and a little bit behind him. A constant, warm presence. He couldn't be grateful for it.

At the road, he turned in the direction of his car, but Jack caught his hand, stopping him. He finally looked. Jack's eyes were rimmed red, and so ungodly sad. "No," he said, his voice almost lost in the sound-deadening snow. "We'll get it tomorrow. I'll drive you home."

"I'm not going home."

"I'll take you wherever you want to go."

The desperate worry in Jack's voice slumped Ianto's shoulders and nodded his head. Some small light of relief appeared on Jack's face, and he started for the SUV, Ianto's hand still in his. He walked to the passenger side and opened the door, let Ianto slide in and then went to his own side.

The headlights illuminated the falling white, and they pulled out onto the road, the only visible car forever.

"Where are you going?" Jack asked.

Ianto stared, eyes lidded, out of the window. "My sister's."

Jack nodded and took the first turn they came to.

- - -

They parked across the street from the Davies' house. Ianto peered out of the passenger window; they were all outside. Johnny, David and Mica were playing in the snow, chasing each other; shouting and laughing. Rhiannon sat on the stoop, watching them, bundled up, her arms wrapped around herself.

Jack was looking past Ianto, out at the family. "Are they your niece and nephew?"

Ianto nodded, watching as Mica slipped and Johnny came up behind her and set her back to her feet.

"What are their names?"

"Mica," Ianto said. He took a breath. "And David."

Jack looked at him. He put his hand over Ianto's.

"I'm sorry."

Ianto looked at him.

Jack met his eyes, then looked past him, out of the window again. "Do you want me to go with you? Meet them?"

Ianto looked down at the SUV dashboard. He shook his head. "No."

Jack frowned, then nodded.

Ianto slipped his hand out from under Jack's and put it on the door handle. Without turning to look at him, he said quietly, "Thanks. For the ride."

"It's fine."

Ianto slowly opened the car door and slipped out into the cold, snow spiraling in through the gap. Then he shut the door, looked in both directions and crossed the street toward the Davies' house. Jack watched him. He watched Ianto cross to the sidewalk, watched his shoes whisper over the slowly whitening grass as he made his way over the lawn. Watched as Johnny stopped chasing Mica and called a greeting. Watched Ianto raise a hand and keep going, moving for the stoop, for his sister. Watched as Rhiannon stood, concern on her face – Jack knew why; Ianto, so pale, so shattered, his hands shaking the entire ride, his breath unsteady and sharp. Watched as Ianto shook his head against her questions – all he could do, probably.

Watched as Rhiannon pulled him into a hug, holding onto him tightly in the light from the streetlamps, in the light from the windows, in that strange light of snow.

Jack started the SUV. He wiped his eyes. He gave reign to the whisperings of grief inside of his own chest.

He drove away.

_Fin_


End file.
